


Blow Out All the Candles

by notsafeforowls



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 12:04:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14260587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notsafeforowls/pseuds/notsafeforowls
Summary: "When's your birthday?"All Mick wants is to eat cake in peace. All Ray wants is to know when Mick's birthday is.





	Blow Out All the Candles

“When’s your birthday?”

 

Mick didn’t look up from the cake he was carefully cutting into pieces. Who’d have thought that English was such a good baker? Or that he’d have made so many different cakes for a single birthday. It had been the new kid’s first birthday with the team, and Sara had insisted on them all celebrating it.

 

Halfway through the party, Ray had called it team bonding, and Zari had groaned before shoving a slice of cake in his mouth before he’d been able to say anything else. Mick had just been glad that someone else had done it before he had to pick which slice he’d been holding had to be sacrificed.

 

Which, of course, had led right to this: Mick standing in the kitchen at two in the morning, cutting up one of the many cakes (way too many; the entire team had barely finished three of the dozen, and Wally had offloaded three on his family during a brief stop in Central City), and ignoring Ray’s question.

 

“Mick?” Ray asked, in that damn tone which meant that he knew that Mick had ignored him, and that he was giving him a second chance to listen. “When’s your birthday?”

 

“Doesn’t matter. I came here for a snack, Haircut, not to chat about birthdays.” He hadn’t celebrated it since he’d been a kid, unless he counted the times he’d picked up someone because he’d realised what day it was. He added a slice from the freshly cut cake to the plate full of slices he’d already taken from the other ones.

 

Ray used the side of a fork to cut off a piece from his solitary slice of cake. One of the strawberry ones.

 

Assuming he was safe now, Mick sat down at the other side of the table, and picked up a piece. Chocolate cherry… something. It tasted good, anyway, which was all that Mick cared about.  It wasn’t sugar free either, even if English had told them all that it was gluten free for Ray. He wished that he’d kept a slice of the banoffee cake instead of eating two the other night; it had been his second favourite after the huge chocolate fudge one (and there was still half of that one left.)

 

“Do you know that my brother’s birthday is two days before mine?”

 

So much for being safe. Mick shoved half of the chocolate cherry thing in his mouth and hoped that Ray would take the hint if Mick physically couldn’t say anything. He hadn’t known about the birthday, though. He didn't even know when Ray's birthday was.

 

“We always had to share parties,” Ray continued, either oblivious or ignoring Mick ignoring him. “And our gifts. Sydney would always break something in the week after the party, and it was always my favourite present. When we were seven, we got new bikes from my grandparents, and he borrowed mine to go to the park with his friends; he broke the chain and left it at the park in the rain.” Ray went so quiet that Mick was sure he’d finished. And then, “I still missed it after our parents divorced, though. Sydney went with my dad and I stayed with my mom. The parties stopped, though. I didn’t really have very many friends to invite.” Ray let out a sad little laugh. “Or any, really.”

 

Mick swallowed hard, glad when he didn’t choke on the cake. It suddenly seemed heavy and cloying, too much for him. They all did. Which was ridiculous because he’d been thinking about half of them since he’d reluctantly gone to bed the other night after the party.

 

“Anyway, I always missed having those parties,” Ray said brightly, his expression transforming in a second, and Mick wanted to grab him by the collar and order him to stop pretending that everything was okay. But that would have meant that _he’d_ have to stop pretending that he didn’t give a shit. “The other night, I looked around and it reminded me of when I was a kid, and when I still celebrated my birthday. Especially when Nate and Zari brought out the helium; Sydney did that when we were seven.”

 

Luckily for them all, Gideon was an expert at dealing with near death experiences, even if she had also lectured them for daring Nate to do it.

 

“There must be something you remember about your birthdays when you were a kid. Everyone has something.”

 

He wanted to tell Ray that he didn’t remember anything from his birthdays because he'd spent years trying not to think about those years in general, or that he wanted to know why Ray'd missed his asshole brother who broke his stuff, or maybe just tell him that the other kids had been idiots (because they had been.)

 

Instead, what came out was, “Broken glass,” because that was what he’d remembered as soon as Ray had mentioned birthdays. Glass smashing, from bottles or just from a glass his old man had knocked over in the kitchen. His entire childhood had been full of it.

 

Ray’s face fell. “Oh,” he said.

 

And he looked so damn disappointed and guilty that Mick regretted saying anything, thought he should have kept his mouth shut.

 

“My birthday’s the thirteenth of March,” and Mick forced himself to add, “and I didn’t have any parties,” as soon as he saw Ray’s face light up and saw the question forming.

 

It hadn’t really been possible, since his old man had usually been drunk off his ass before nine in the morning; his mom had been working all hours to make up for his dad not working at all, and him drinking too much of her wages. Not that Mick had even had very many friends to begin with. Most of them had vanished when Mick had hit his teens, even more of them were gone after Mick had burned the house down, and the last one had left the second the door to that meat locker had closed.

 

“My mom used to buy me a cake,” Mick offered instead. “Just a little one. She’d pick it up from her work when she finished and she’d have it waiting in my room when I got home from school. It was always the same type.”

 

Chocolate fudge cake. His favourite. It had always been his favourite, right from when he’d been little, and Mick couldn’t even remember having any other sort. Once, there had been photographs of him as a baby, grinning at the camera, his face covered in cake.

 

It came back in a strange rush.

 

His mom sitting beside him on his bedroom floor, one arm around his shoulders as she told him to make a wish, even though he’d been too old to make them for a long time, and old enough to know they didn’t come true for even longer. And Mick had done it, because he’d always done anything for his mom.

 

Mick couldn’t even remember if he’d made a wish in the end. Maybe he’d wished for something stupid. Maybe that had been the year he’d wished for his dad to go away. Or maybe that had been the year he’d closed his eyes and wished for her to have a better life, the one she deserved.

 

But he remembered her putting the lighter in his hand and whispering, “Just for today. Don’t tell your dad,” as she let him light the candles year after year, even after his dad had threatened to break his wrist if he caught Mick with a lighter again.

 

“I forgot that.” His voice sounded raw, even to his own ears, and he swore internally because Ray would be on that in seconds.

 

“Forgot what?”

 

Mick didn’t look up as he picked up one of the forks and very carefully cut off a small piece of the chocolate fudge cake. He didn’t eat it, just stared at it. “She used to let me light the candles before I blew them out.”

 

Ray stared at him with that soft, wide-eyed expression he got whenever Mick told him something personal, like Mick baring his soul had ripped open something in Ray’s damn chest.

 

“Don’t do that, Haircut,” Mick said, because that look made something twist in Mick’s chest, something like guilt, and he wasn’t even sure why.

 

But Ray wasn’t listening, because he kept staring at Mick like _that_. In seconds, before Mick could try and stop whatever the hell he was thinking, Ray was up and around the table, his fork and the half slice of cake abandoned. He stopped awkwardly beside Mick’s seat, fidgeting like he’d forgotten what he usually did with his hands.

 

“Don’t punch me,” was all Ray said before he leaned down and kissed him.

 

The fork clattered to the table.

 

It wasn’t the worst kiss he’d ever had, Mick thought, even if Ray’s lips were dry, and the angle was off, and their noses were in the way in a way that bordered on painful, and he had to twist his arm in a weird way to put one hand on the back of Ray’s head to get him to deepen the kiss, Ray making a surprised little _oh_ sound against Mick’s lips before his lips parted.

 

He tasted like strawberries, and Mick chased that taste, slipping his tongue between Ray’s lips and pulling him close until Ray pulled away, breathing heavily.

 

“You didn’t punch me,” Ray gasped as he dropped into the seat beside Mick. Smiling, his lips pink and swollen now, the first traces of stubble burn visible at the right side of his mouth, he’d never looked better. “I mean—I didn’t think you would—I just—I wasn’t sure if you, well, if you were even interested in-"

 

Mick shut him up by doing the only thing he could think of that didn’t involve wasting a perfectly good slice of cake: grabbing him by the collar and kissing him until he was sure that Ray had given up on trying to finish that sentence.

 

“March the thirteenth. I’m going to get you something for your birthday,” Ray said when Mick pulled back a little, leaning forward until their foreheads were pressed together, half-leaning against each other. “That was all I was going to do. I was just trying to find out when your birthday was, and I had this really stupid idea of giving you a kiss for your birthday? I know it sounds bad, but it sounded really good, and Nate and Wally thought giving someone a kiss for their birthday was a good idea – I didn’t tell them it was you, though, they don’t know! And then you gave me a really weird look when I told you about the parties with my brother and-”

 

 Fucking hell.

 

Mick glanced at the slice of chocolate fudge cake as Ray continued rambling, and decided that it would have to be sacrificed.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Candles by Daughter (it's not my goal to use every lyric from it as a title, I just really love the song.)
> 
> I'm mickroryed on Tumblr so feel free to come yell at me about any of my ships.


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